


The Promise

by teleen



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, F/M, Gen, Happy Ending, M/M, Nightmares, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:35:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teleen/pseuds/teleen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor makes Jack a promise, but being the Doctor, takes his time keeping it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Promise

He had nightmares down to an art form. He’d been a soldier most of his life and being a soldier meant that you couldn’t whimper or twitch or heaven forbid, scream without risking not only your life, but the lives of everyone with you.

    No one casually watching him sleep would ever guess that he was dreaming anything but a pleasant dream. But then the being watching, _wasn’t_ watching casually.

    He was running, running, running and this wasn’t the good sort of running, not the sort that he did with Rose and the Doctor, this was running away, running from _them_ –

    The man calling himself Captain Jack Harkness woke with a nearly inaudible gasp in a familiar room, surrounded by familiar sounds, smells and feelings. It was odd how comfortable he felt here given that he’d only been on board for…

Actually, it was a bit difficult to say how long he’d been on board. Between running with the Doctor and Rose and their odd sleep patterns on the TARDIS, his sense of time was distorted, to say the least.

    A soft hum permeated the air, a sound so deep and omnipresent he barely noticed it anymore except at times like this. The hum rose in pitch for a moment, almost… questioning. But that was silly – a hum couldn’t question.

    Cursing himself a fool for anthropomorphizing a ship that didn’t even speak to him, Jack got up to look for a drink. So far, he hadn’t seen any alcohol on board, but then, until tonight he hadn’t really been looking that hard, either.

    He wandered in the general direction of the kitchen, but it wasn’t where he’d left it and he cursed. He could swear that the hum got almost amused then, but no, that was impossible. He passed a conservatory, an indoor courtyard of some sort and an odd enclosure that looked like a cross between a squash court and a cricket pitch before realizing that it was beyond stupid to go wandering like this on a ship where kitchens moved and he had no clue how big it was.

    The amused quality of the hum increased and Jack scowled. “Fine, if you’re so smart, where’s the kitchen then?”

    “Just over here, Captain.”

    Jack jumped and bit back a most undignified yelp of surprise. “Doctor!”

    “You were expecting someone else?”

    “I- No- Never mind.”

    “How long you been lost?”

    “Didn’t realize I was until just now.”

    The Doctor gave a grunt, but to Jack’s relief he didn’t ask why his passenger ( _companion, friend?)_ was out walking in the middle of the night.

    Jack followed the alien ( _and what species was the Doctor, anyway? Somehow he’d never gotten ‘round to asking)_ into the cozy, well-lit room and began to rummage through the cupboards while the Doctor poured himself a glass of milk.

    “What are you looking for?”

    “Alcohol.”

    “Third cabinet to the right.” Jack reached in that direction. “But it won’t help.”

    “Always has before.”

    The Doctor murmured noncommittally as Jack pulled out a bottle of something purple and poured a good belt of it. He waited until the Captain had thrown back about half of it to speak. “Nightmares?”

    Jack shrugged. Whatever that purple stuff was, it wasn’t bad. “Not really. I can’t remember them later, anyway.”

    “Tell me about your missing two years.”

    Jack looked up in surprise. The Doctor returned his shrug. “Rose mentioned it. She wanted to see if I could help you find out what happened.”

    “What did you tell her?”

    “That if you wanted help you’d ask for it.”

    “There you go.”

    “But you haven’t asked.”

    “No.”

    “Have you missed the way it is here, Captain?”

    “What do you mean?”

    “If it were Rose who was missing two years, don’t you think we’d be going after them for her?”

    Jack shook his head. “That’s different.”

    “Why’s that?”

    “You know why.”

    “Remind me.”

    “I almost wiped out humanity.”

    “I’ve almost wiped out the Universe before and yet it’s still here. I heard an expression on Earth once. Don’t know if it’s still around in the 51st century, but here it goes, ‘almost only counts in horseshoes-‘“

    “And hand grenades,” Jack finished. He’d heard that one around the barracks back in 1941.

    “That’s right. What’s the last thing you remember before the memories went missing?”

    Jack thought for a moment. “New mission. I was in my CO’s office, getting mission specs.”

    “Do you remember what the mission was?”

    Jack gave him a bitter smile, shaking his head as he downed what was left in his glass. “No. Believe me, I’ve tried. I can remember being called to the meeting. I can even remember her speaking to me. After that… nothing.”

    “And what’s the first thing you remember when you woke up?”

    “My CO looking down at me. It was weird. She was an odd duck, that one. Older, but still sharp. Still hot, if you want to know the truth…” Jack felt suddenly nauseous.

    The Doctor noticed. “What is it, lad?”

    “Nothing, I… For a moment I just…”

    “Where were you?”

    “Where was I, what?”

    “Where were you when your CO was looking down at you?”

    “I was in the hospital.”

    “A private hospital?”

    “Yeah.” He paused, reflecting. “It wasn’t one that the Time Agency normally used.”

    “Then how do you know it was them who made you forget?”

    “Why would anyone else make me forget two years?”

    “I don’t know, Captain. Why would they?”

    Jack shook his head. “No one else had a motive.”

    “That you know of. It was two years. A lot can happen in two years.”

    “Why don’t you think it was the Agency?”

    “I’ve had some dealings with them in the past. Memory blocks aren’t really their style. Well, not ones this sloppy anyway.”

    “Sloppy?”

    “You’re getting bleed-through in your dreams. It’s why I came to find you, actually. If we don’t do something about it soon, it’ll start to affect you while you’re awake.”

    “Do what?”

    The Doctor gave him an odd little smile. “You’ve never asked, Captain.”

    “Asked what?”

    “What I am.”

    “Not really polite, is it?”

    “Since when do you worry about being polite?”

    “Since I had someone save my life when they had no reason to.”

    The Doctor conceded his point with a nod. “Well?”

    “Well, what?”

    “Aren’t you going to ask now?”

    “You could just tell me.”

    “I could, couldn’t I?”

    Jack chuckled and sighed out an exasperated breath. “What are you?”

    “I’m a Time Lord.”

    “Oh, why didn’t you say so before? So am I!”

    “I’m serious, Captain.”

    Jack was utterly terrified for a moment, terrified that he was on this impossible ship with a madman. The moment passed as he realized that yeah, not much else made sense. “I thought Time Lords were just a myth.”

    “We are now. I’m the last one.”

    “That a long story, too?”

    The Doctor shook his head. “Nah.Short story, that. There was a Time War. We lost. But so did the other side.”

    “Who was the other side?”

    “Daleks.”

    “Another myth.”

    “Be glad of it, Captain.”

    Jack repressed a shudder. “So you’re a Time Lord. Are you going to somehow show me those two years?”

    “In a manner of speaking.”

    “What do you want to do?”

    “I want to look inside your head.”

    “Telepathically?”

    “Yes.”

    “No!” Jack’s reaction was instinctive and immediate. He even stepped back a pace.

    “There’s no other way. Do you like feeling like this, Captain? Running in your dreams, not able to get away, not even really going anywhere?”

    “No,” he whispered.

    “Let me help.”

    “What do you need to do?”

    “Just sit down.”

    “You want to do it here? What if Rose wants a midnight snack?”

    The Doctor looked as if the thought honestly hadn’t occurred to him. “Where did you think?”

    “I don’t know. Somewhere else.”

    The Doctor reflected for a moment _._ “I have just the place. Come on then.” The Doctor strode past him down the corridor, leaving Jack in the position of having to hurry to catch up. Considering that he was on his way to having a telepath look in his head, and a _Time Lord_ telepath at that, he didn’t particularly want to be rushing just then. He rushed anyway. The Doctor seemed to have that effect on people.

    They stopped at a door that Jack hadn’t seen before, but that was hardly a surprise. Jack had a feeling that he could get lost for a year in this ship and still not see everything there was to see. For a moment the hum he’d all but forgotten sounded as though it was agreeing with him.

    The Doctor laid his hand on the door in a way that made Jack think it was a ritual of some sort and it opened on to a simple open space. As they moved inside, Jack could feel that it wasn’t a room, not really, but what else did you call an enclosed space within another structure but a room?

    He would have described the space as white, but it wasn’t, not really. A white room would have been harsh and this room wasn’t harsh at all. It was calm. For a moment, Jack almost thought the Doctor had somehow drugged him or that the purple stuff was a lot stronger than he’d realized, but then he understood that it was just the room. And somehow, the ship that it was a part of.

    He really shouldn’t have been so afraid to have the Doctor in his head. It was looking like the TARDIS was there already.

    There was a chair in the middle of the room that looked like something that Jack had seen in a sex club once. He looked at the Doctor in surprise. “How exactly are we going to link up in here, Doctor?”

    “None of that, now!” he scolded, but Jack could sense the good humor underneath. “I’ll sit in down first, you sit with your back to my chest so that we’ll be comfortable for however long this takes.”

    The chair was more comfortable than it looked, but then, it would have to be. Sitting in it, with his back against the Doctor’s chest, Jack felt far more relaxed than he felt that he should be, in the circumstances.

    The Doctor’s cool hands came to rest on his face and Jack felt all-encompassing fear. “Relax, lad. Haven’t done anything yet. We’ll take this slow and easy, yeah?” Jack gave a brief, jerky nod. “Anything you don’t want me to see, just visualize a closed airlock, alright?”

    He felt it then, felt the lightest of touches on the surface of his mind. The desire to pull away was overwhelming… Without warning, it passed. He felt… calm...  Disconnected, almost.

    _What the fuck is happening to me?_

    He never knew how much time passed later, only that when it was over his entire body felt like one giant cramp and he was soaked with sweat. The Doctor eased him up and when he looked at the man whom he no longer doubted was a Time Lord, he found him not looking much better than Jack felt.

    He attempted to work enough spit into his mouth to speak. When he succeeded, he swallowed and asked hoarsely, “Well?”

    The Doctor’s eyes were terrible for a moment and Jack again felt the fear he’d felt before as he realized that Time Lord he might be, but he was also incontrovertibly a bit mad as well. “I’m sorry.”

    “For what?”

    “I can’t tell you what I saw.”

    “Why?”

    “It’s a fixed point, lad.”

    “But it’s already happened.”

    The Doctor gave a weary shrug. “It has and it hasn’t. But I promise you one thing.”

    “What’s that?”

    “One day I will tell you.”

    “I-“

    “Don’t ask me about this again, not ever. When the time’s right, I promise I’ll tell you, but… After tonight, after we leave here, I have to make myself forget and… You mustn’t ever bring it up understand?”

    Jack looked in those eyes and wanted to argue with everything he was. “I understand,” was what he said instead.

    “Good. And… I am sorry, I hope you remember that.”

    “For whatever it’s worth?” Jack asked, raising a sardonic eyebrow.

    The Doctor looked as though he wanted to smile. “Yeah.”

    Jack kept his promise and the subject was never brought up again. As he stood before the Daleks to die all he could think was, _the Doctor lied._

    Time passed, slowly for some, quite quickly for others, and the man who made the promise changed every cell in his body and ran to the end of the Universe to escape the _wrong_ that his own stupidity had created.

    The _wrong_ turned merely impossible during the year of the paradox and he found that he once again wanted to call that man companion once more. But it wasn’t really a shock when he said no.

    Time went on, the Earth was stolen, he nearly changed his face and he lost Rose all over again. But still his friend was there, dying for him whenever needed, but the Doctor still couldn’t bring himself to say what he’d always meant to, _thanks, Jack._ Somehow, it never felt right…

    The TARDIS nudged him.

It was a bit odd, really, because normally the TARDIS didn’t nudge. Normally she just materialized wherever she felt he needed to be, shoving rather than nudging.

There was only one person she would nudge him for.

He considered. He knew what had happened, of course he did. It was one of the most significant events of the early 21st century. And he knew what Jack had done to stop them, knew the sacrifice he had been forced to make…

It was a fixed point. There was nothing that the Doctor could have done.

The TARDIS nudged him again. He sighed.

The Doctor’s next thought was that it wasn’t his problem. He didn’t want this, didn’t want to deal with Jack. Jack was wrong. Jack was impossible.  Jack was… his friend.

When the Doctor really looked at it, Jack was one of his best friends. He’d left the man stranded and alone, left him on Earth for 139 years and when Jack had caught up to him, he’d run away again, causing both of them a lot of pain that could have been avoided if he were just a bit… braver.

The nudge came a third time and he got the feeling that if he didn’t respond to it soon, the TARDIS was going to take matters into her own circuits and materialize him in the middle of whatever mess Jack was in, whether he liked it or not.

He went to the console to see what she’d found. Five minutes later, he was swearing – at himself, not Jack.

He’d never thought of it, and it was bloody stupid on his part, because he should have.

Fixed point.

When he materialized, Jack was unconscious. He could see what they’d been doing, felt vaguely ill, and worked to get his friend free of the straps that bound him to the table.

Jack came to halfway through. “Doctor! Come to join the party?”

“I’m getting you out of here.”

“Why bother? It’s not as though what they’re saying isn’t true.”

“Let’s go, Captain.”

Jack didn’t argue as the Doctor supported him and took him to the TARDIS, which told the Time Lord more than anything else could have that Jack was in even worse shape than he’d thought.

Once his friend was safely inside, the Doctor went to have a word with the Time Agency.

The people in charge were not amused by his incursion and in fact tried to put the Doctor in Jack’s place on the examining table. The Doctor was himself and the Time Agency soon learned why everyone from Daleks to Vashta Nerada feared a skinny, manic, utterly harmless-looking alien.

When he got back to the TARDIS, the Doctor was disheveled but unharmed and the Time Agency was decidedly worse for wear. He’d always meant to deal with them during his eighth regeneration, but had never gotten around to it. As usual, Jack had paid the price for his mistake.

Jack wasn’t where he’d left him and the Doctor could only imagine what the stubborn idiot was thinking, but the Doctor could find him no matter where he was in the Universe, let alone on _his_ TARDIS, and he found the Captain in the medbay. The TARDIS gave him a firmer nudge as he hesitated in the doorway.

Jack looked up from where he’d been availing himself of the TARDIS’ dermal regenerator, bone knitter, and a few assorted painkillers. “Sorry. Just drop me off at the nearest port, early 21st century, if possible.”

“What are you sorry for?”

Jack blinked. “I don’t know.Existing, I guess? How’d you get involved with this, anyway?”

“Long story.”

Jack shrugged. “You don’t have to tell me.” He paused. “I guess I should thank you.”

“Should you?”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

They looked at each other awkwardly for a moment.

“Do you mind if I raid the wardrobe?” Jack hadn’t been clothed when the Doctor came for him and hadn’t bothered to put on one of the infirmary gowns.

“Not at all. Why don’t you rest for a bit, first?”

“I would’ve thought you’d want me gone as soon as possible.”

The Doctor frowned. “Why would you think that?”

“Well, I know you said that the whole ‘wrong’ thing doesn’t bother you anymore, but I know it does. And I am a child murderer now, besides.”

The Doctor winced. “You didn’t murder him.”

Jack’s expression was utterly blank. “So you did know.”

“Fixed point.”

Jack gave him a wan smile. “Just like me.”

The Doctor shook his head. “No, nothing else in the Universe is like you, Captain.”

“The Time Agency agreed with you.”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I should have thought of it.”

“Why didn’t you?”

The Doctor shook his head. “I don’t know, I… should have.”

For a moment Jack looked almost knowing and the Doctor felt that he should ask what he knew for a moment, but the moment passed. The timing still wasn’t right. He felt it with everything he was, but he couldn’t quite say _why._

He left the Captain on a space station, with clothes that looked remarkably like his old ones and a Vortex Manipulator in perfect order.

He saw him only once more in that body. Sending Alonso to Jack wasn’t the best thing he could have done, it still wasn’t thank you, but in the end, it was all he had time for.

A moment or an eon later, two men met in a field under the stars. The grass was apple grass and they each ate a blade before speaking.

“I saw River Song for the last time today.

“That explains the haircut.”    

“It does.” The silence stretched out between them for a long, long moment. “I have something I have to tell you, Jack.”

“What’s that?”

“I made you a promise.”

“You did.”

“I’d like to keep it, if I may.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Well not yet, but you will be.”

“Just tell me.”

The Doctor reached for him.Jack surprised both of them by not flinching when the Time Lord’s cool hands touched his face.

Feeling their minds come together again was far better than Jack remembered. Before he could remember being frightened when the Doctor touched him in this way. Now, it felt like he was regaining a piece of youth long lost.

The Doctor reached deep and for once Jack didn’t really care to hide anything from him. The Doctor didn’t pause as he moved back through time in Jack’s mind, past dead lovers, dead friends and a dead grandson. Past a dead brother, 1900 years of torment, a year of torture, and 139 years of crushing grief to a place where two years were conspicuously absent from his memories. Even as long as it had been, he still felt their absence keenly.

The Doctor wasn’t careful with his doors either. Jack saw River and Amy and Rory and Sarah Jane and Donna and so many others it nearly overwhelmed him. He saw the Master and what he’d done to save the Earth from Gallifrey’s return. He saw why the Doctor had wept when he’d thought the Master had died in his arms and a piece of bitterness that Jack wasn’t even aware of holding onto evaporated.

And between the two of them, they each saw something in the other that could no longer be denied, no matter how much they had tried to do so in the past.

For all of the pain that it had caused so very long ago, the truth was actually rather dull by comparison to all the rest. The Time Agency had sent him to investigate an anomaly in space and time. What he’d found was himself. Oh, he hadn’t realized it at first… The Face of Boe hardly looked like him, did he? He’d caught the Face just as it was transitioning to its new form, a very vulnerable time for him, and he’d convinced his younger self not to take him to the Time Agency. But by that time young Jack had put nineteen months of his life into tracking the anomaly down.

He’d had to run from the Time Agency with what he knew, had spent seven months on the run before he’d been caught, but he’d been lucky.He’d been lucky that his CO was in love with him, lucky that she was willing to do what was needed to protect both the timelines and him. Jack couldn’t help but flush with shame when he remembered how he’d treated her when he’d woken up without his memories, knowing how she’d risked and possibly given her life for him and now he’d never have a chance to thank her.

Jack was silent for a long moment. “That’s…not what I expected.”

“No, it wouldn’t be.”

“So, what now?”

The Doctor shrugged and grinned. “Completely up to you.”

“May I buy you a drink?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

They didn’t move from the grass. Jack was waiting, waiting to see what this Doctor would do with him now that he had him.

The Doctor quirked an eyebrow at him. “No drink, then?” He tilted his head and leaned forward in a move that was both gentle and aggressive at once.

Jack kept perfectly still as his Time Lord finally touched his lips to his for the first time since Satellite Five.

It wasn’t ground-shattering and no one would write epic poems about it ( _well, maybe one or two, but only very bad poets would take up that particular task_), but it still answered a question that Jack had had for many thousands of years.

The Doctor was an exceptionally good kisser.


End file.
